….. Mostly about things I create…

I’m working on a 24″x24″ wall hanging, the original purchased pattern by Carol Morrisseytitled “July” measures 42″sq. but after a quick trip to FedEx to reduce things I headed home and began cutting out flower heads. The fabrics on the left in the plastic packaging are the ones contained in the kit, the fabrics on the right are ones I chose from my stash to compliment the kit. Just ignore the blue ones, they’re from a totally different project. I bought the kit (pattern, background and flower fabrics) from The Quilted Skein in historic downtown La Grange, TX. Such a lovely quilt/yarn shop! Stop in if you’re ever in the area!

After I decided on my fabrics my first step was to do a test sunflower. I shaded a bit with colored pencils, liked the look and charged full steam ahead.

I used an iron on product called Heat ‘n Bond Lite, double batted with Hobbs 80/20 white and backed with 100% cotton from my stash. Here’s a collage of the arrangement:

Once all the flowers and leaves were ironed in place I loaded the project on my longarm (Innova) and began the quilting. I changed threads throughout the entire process, always matching color top and bobbin. I chose the threads from my machine embroidery thread collection as I wanted the sheen of the rayon and poly plus I had a much wider choice of colors. This thread work was an excellent way to give the flowers dimension, continuing where the colored pencil shading left off.

You’ll see I quilted only the flowers and leaves, nothing on the background fabric. When the embellishing is complete I’ll decide whether or not the piece needs to be loaded back on the longarm for additional quilting. After all the quilting/thread work was finished I began to add beading embellishments.